Although the ancient city of Nicaea lies in ruins and the geographic centre of Christianity has shifted West, Pope Leo XIV and Christian leaders gathered at an archaeological site in Türkiye to celebrate the enduring faith set out in the Nicene Creed.

Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople hosted the ecumenical prayer service and the common recitation of the Creed Nov. 28 at Iznik, site of the ancient Nicaea, about 80 miles southeast of Istanbul.
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Seventeen centuries after bishops from East and West convened in Nicaea to craft the creed that defined Christianity, Pope Leo XIV returned to the ancient site with an appeal to “overcome the scandal of the divisions” that continue to fracture Christians today.

Marking the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea — the centrepiece of his trip to Türkiye and Lebanon — the pope called on Christians the world over “to nurture the desire for unity for which the Lord Jesus prayed and gave his life.”

On his second day in Türkiye, he prayed alongside Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians, on the shore of Lake Iznik — where the council that established a common creed for Christians convened 1,700 years ago.
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In an historic commemoration of the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council, faith leaders gathered in Nicaea—modern-day Iznik, Türkiye – on 28 November to mark the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council in the history of the church.

World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay joined His All Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Leo XIV for an ecumenical prayer service.
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At the heart of Pope Leo XIV’s journey to Türkiye this weekend will be a pilgrimage to Iznik, a small city about 140 km south of Istanbul. Iznik is better known to Church history by its Greek name, Nicaea. That’s where, 1700 years ago, the First Ecumenical Council was held. This Friday, Pope Leo is gathering with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and other Christian leaders for an ecumenical prayer service to celebrate the landmark anniversary.
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When Christians recite the Creed, it should prompt an examination of conscience about what they truly believe and what kind of example of faith in God they give to others, Pope Leo XIV wrote.

“Wars have been fought, and people have been killed, persecuted and discriminated against in the name of God,” he wrote. “Instead of proclaiming a merciful God, a vengeful God has been presented who instills terror and punishes.”
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In his book, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Daniel Boyarin presents the parting of the ways as two sibling traditions born from the same mother (that is, second Temple Judaism, in all its diversity) and gradually developing apart over a long and complicated historical and cultural process, almost the way different languages emerge from their root mother – French and Italian from Latin, for instance, though intervening languages like Provencal, Occitan, or Romansch complicate a simplistic either/or picture.
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“We believe.” These are the first words of the original Nicene Creed, written 1,700 years ago at the Council of Nicaea. This ecumenical council in 325 AD produced a summary statement of Christian belief that has been professed by Christians around the world ever since. Both for its longevity and its universal appeal, the Nicene Creed stands apart from every other statement of Christian belief. It also has a profound ecumenical significance, which I explored in January’s One Body article, Do You Believe This?

At the end of November, Pope Leo XIV is expected to visit Nicaea with Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew. Each year, the pope and patriarch send delegations to the other to celebrate their patronal feasts of Sts. Peter and Paul in Rome on June 29 and St. Andrew in Constantinople (Istanbul) on November 30. This year, in the modern city of Iznik, where Nicaea once was, the two leaders will together commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the first ecumenical council. They will also commend the church to continue in the dialogue of life and love begun at the end of the Second Vatican Council.
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When Jesus comes to Mary and Martha in Bethany after the death of Lazarus, he says to Martha “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” And then he asks her, “Do you believe this?” Martha responds, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world” (John 11:25-27). This exchange prepares us for the miracle of the raising of Lazarus: one who believed, yet even though he died, he lived. Like Lazarus, we who believe, even though we will die, will be raised by Jesus into eternal life.

“Do you believe this?” Jesus’ question puts us on the spot. Our belief, or profession of faith, determines whether we will inherit eternal life. At the same time, in other passages in the Gospels, Jesus reminds us that love of God is the greatest commandment, “and the second is like it,” to love our neighbour as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39; Mark 12:30-31). “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to the least of these [the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, or imprisoned], you did not do it to me” (Matthew 25:45).

In every time, every place, and every way, Christians are called to profess their faith in Christ. Faith in God cannot be limited to simple dogmatic formulas but must embrace our whole heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:36; Mark 12:30). Faith compels us to order our lives in conformity with Christ’s command to care for the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, and imprisoned. What we have done or left undone exposes the imperfections of our profession of faith. So, Jesus’ question “Do you believe this?” is weighted with enormous significance for our lives in this world and the next.
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The Arians believed that Jesus was a created being and not fully divine; these ideas were condemned at Nicaea in 325, but continue to resurface. The hope of the former preacher to the papal household is that this seventeenth centenary year will see a reawakening of faith in the divinity of Christ and in the trinity of God.

The year 2025 marks the seventeenth centenary of the Ecumenical Council held in the city of Nicaea (now Iznik, Turkey) in the early months of 325. The creed sanctioned by that council unites Christians of the historic Churches – Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican – and the various denominations that go under the name of “Evangelical” and “Pentecostal”. This centenary provides us with a unique opportunity – one that only at this point in history are we able to grasp – to acknowledge and celebrate together the faith that unites all believers in Christ.

It also offers us another, no less important opportunity: to take a reconnaissance flight that looks at faith in Christ in the modern and post-modern world and compares where we stand today to the faith of Nicaea. In the aftermath of a local council held in Rimini in 359, dominated by opponents of Nicaea, St Jerome wrote: “The whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian.” We must ask ourselves whether, by chance, we have an even greater reason today to let out such a groan.
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The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Orthodox Church have issued a joint statement on the addition of the Filioque clause to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, a theological issue that has divided the Eastern and Western Church traditions for almost a thousand years.

The word ‘filioque’ (‘and the Son’ in English) to describe the procession of the Holy Spirit, was added by the Latin Church to the Creed centuries after its composition to counter Arianism but the Eastern Church has always protested this insertion.

In a Common Statement of the Joint International Commission on Theological Dialogue between the LWF and the Orthodox Church, both partners “suggest that the translation of the Greek original (without the Filioque) be used in the hope that this will contribute to the healing of age-old divisions between our communities and enable us to confess together the faith of the Ecumenical Councils of Nicæa (325) and Constantinople (381).”
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The World Council of Churches (WCC) is planning a year of activities in 2025 to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the first Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325, a key moment in the history of Christian faith and for the ecumenical journey today.

“The anniversary offers an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on the outpouring mission of God’s triune love and the implications this has for the common witness and service of the churches, it gives us the opportunity to ask afresh with others what Nicaea means for us today.” said WCC general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay.

The first Ecumenical Council was a gathering of Christian bishops in Nicaea, now İznik in present-day Türkiye, as the first attempt to reach consensus in the church through an assembly representing all of Christendom.

“Then, as now, the call to unity was heard within the context of a troubled, unequal, and divided world,” recalled Pillay.
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“If there is no resurrection of the dead, neither is Christ risen! But if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty, your faith also empty “(1 Cor 15:13 ff). With these words, the apostle Paul affirms with absolute clarity that the Christian faith stands or falls with the paschal mystery. The early Church condensed this fundamental conviction in the formula: “Take away the resurrection and you will immediately destroy Christianity.” Given the central importance of the paschal mystery in the Christian faith, it is understandable that Christians wish to celebrate it on a common date.
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The hope that all Christians will be able to celebrate Easter on the same day in the future was reaffirmed by an international ecumenical seminar organized by the Institute of Ecumenical Studies at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, 15 May.

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Lebanon-based Armenian Orthodox leader Aram I has at a Vatican meeting with Pope Benedict XVI proposed that the world’s churches set a common date for Easter, when Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.
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